The Cycle of Juvenile Court History

Abstract

Some long-held assumptions about the origins of the juvenile courts have recently been challenged by Anthony M. Platt and Sanford J. Fox, who argue that middle-class and conservative in terests dominated the juvenile court movement. Generally, the efforts of these writers to correct previous exaggerated claims for the 1899 Illinois Juvenile Court Act are valid and valuable; how ever, both seem to overstate the claims that the reformers them selves made for the Act. Their evidence does not prove that the Act reflected an imposition of middle-class values upon immi grants, racial minorities, and the poor. Furthermore, they pay too little attention to the role of private charity in providing for the new detention facilities and probation services mandated by the 1899 legislation, they overlook the importance of probation as the keystone of juvenile court reform, and, reflecting a long standing tendency, they exaggerate and distort the meaning and role of informal procedures in the early juvenile courts. Under standing the significance of the basic elements and intellectual tendencies of the first juvenile courts can help put present controversies about juvenile court reform in perspective.